Protection from Mac malware for £6

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There have been enough malware scares on the Mac lately. This suggests that the days of not even thinking about checking if your Mac is host to something dubious may be over.

Intego VirusBarrier Plus is a small application (available only from the Mac App Store), which lets you scan your Mac for threats, and, if it finds anything, helps you get rid of them.

It scans your hard drive or selected files for both Mac and Windows malware. This means not only are you protecting yourself, but you're also ensuring you don't unwittingly pass on anything to your PC-using friends.

Scans can be scheduled, so you don't need to remember to run it. What VirusBarrier Plus doesn't do, though, is proactively protect you from downloading or installing anything dodgy – it simply scans your system and reports on what it finds.

It stops short of offering the kind of protection that you'd normally expect from an anti-malware package, but it has the advantage that there's no messy software running on your Mac, potentially impacting performance.

Sophos offers a 'Home Edition' of its antivirus package, which includes the ability to scan files on launch – something that VirusBarrier doesn't include.

But £5.99 is a pretty small price to pay for peace of mind, and if you're only concerned with scanning for Mac-specific threats you can even get the Mac-only VirusBarrier for free from the Mac App Store.

As a solution for checking if your Mac has anything odd installed, Intego VirusBarrier Plus works well.